Chickpea Cakes with Shaved Asparagus and Yogurt

Ever since making these sweet potato cakes, I’ve been thinking about recreating something similar, without seasonal produce. A recipe that could serve as a base year-round. I love these chickpea cakes because it’s like eating hummus, only in a delicious, some-what crispy, cake form. These cakes are easy to throw together and work really well with many different vegetables.

Asparagus

10-12 stalks of asparagus

1 tablespoon olive oil

Salt and Pepper to taste

Yogurt

¼ cup plain greek yogurt

1 tablespoon olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

paprika and olive oil, to top

Instructions

Using a food processor, pulse garlic until minced. Add in chickpeas, tahini, tamari, and parmesan: continuing to pulse until mixture begins to crumble a bit. Finally, add in egg, flour, salt and pepper. Pulse until mixture comes together- it will be sticky. If mixture seems more like hummus, add in 1 more tablespoon of flour.

Heat olive oil over medium heat. Wet hands and form four rough looking patties with chickpea mixture. Place patties in skillet and cook on each side until brown, 5 to 6 minutes. Remove and place on a paper towel if patties seem a bit greasy.

While cakes are cooking, thinly slice or shave asparagus. Toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Once cakes are done, place asparagus in same pan and let cook until begin to soften, 2 to 3 minutes.

To make yogurt topping, whisk together yogurt, olive oil, salt, and pepper-taste to make desired flavor.

Place cakes on a plate and top with asparagus, yogurt, sprinkle of paprika, and a light drizzle of olive oil.

Notes

+ If you are unable to find vegetarian parmesan, leave it out.

Did you make this recipe?

Chickpea Cakes

variations

I picked up the yogurt topping from one of my favorite cookbooks, Ottolenghi’s Plenty. It’s simple, not-overpowering addition to these chickpea cakes. I use it on quite a bit of my meals and it’s such a great way to showcase yogurt in a slightly more savory way.

Vegan: Drop the yogurt (or use coconut yogurt) and parmesan then use a flax egg (1 tablespoon flax seeds + 3 tablespoons water) in place of the egg.

I’m a firm believer that if you have a can of chickpeas, you have the base for an excellent meal. These chickpea cakes are solid proof of that. Cook up a big batch of dried beans, freeze them in 2 cup portions, and pull them out as needed.

My boyfriend got me PLENTY a couple weeks ago and I am in love with it. Love the chickpea cakes and the yogurt dressing detour. Very creative! I first discovered yogurt dressing from a Skye Gyngell recipe book where she had some garlic added to yogurt as dressing for sunny side up eggs cooked in browned butter and saged.

Hummus in crispy, cake form sounds awesome! And as I can’t seem to get enough asparagus lately this sounds like an excellent way to get my fix and change-it up. I usually just roast the veggie with a little olive oil and salt and then have to try very hard not to eat the whole bunch right then and there :-).

Wow–very creative! You are one of those participants every week that blows me away with creativity…I made soup as the recipe laid out–how boring! But really, the soup was very good. I will just need to try your creation some other time!

[…] recipe was for a soup, but Erin had a different interpretation in mind. She shared a recipe for Chickpea Cakes with Shaved Asparagus and Yogurt and they looked so good I made them for dinner that very same […]